As the weeks continue to march on, I am feeling stretched rather thin. At times like these, it is important to take the time to discern what God’s will is for this season, this moment. I have taken on quite a bit creatively, and Bilbo’s words from Fellowship keep coming back to me. This is from when he is talking to Gandalf about why he needs to go away from the Shire.
Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
I am not ready to say weekly Gospel reflections here need to be paused, but I don’t have the creative energy or time to do both a YouTube video and additional post. So for this week, I leave you in the most capable of hands, Pope Francis.
Well, we’ve had a week. And it’s ending with our dog needing to have one of his eyes removed. I’ll spare you the details.
But, even in all that, I still wanted to get a brief reflection out there about this Sunday’s Gospel reading. It even loosely ties into the dog business that has consumed so much of my waking and sleeping thoughts.
To boil it all down: None of this world actually belongs to us. Not my sweet dog, not my joyful (or not so joyful when certain math problems get tricky) children, not my home, not my husband, not even my own life. None of this big, wide, beautiful, messy world belongs to me. Nor, I’m sorry to say, does it belong to you. All of what we have belongs to God.
In this Gospel passage, Jesus lays out the whole of humanity’s reality in a few brief sentences.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
Matthew 21:33
God created the world and everything in it. He then gave it to His most beautiful creations, humans, to be stewards over what He had made. And while the parable mentions a journey, we know that God has not walked away from His creation to leave us to struggle on our own. It is, after all, a parable and meant to illustrate a point. The point here is that God, the land owner, has given the tenants, aka us, the ability to freely choose how to live in the vineyard.
If we really, truly, take this to heart, it has some important implications in our relationships with others and with the wider world around us. It’s the whole, “With great power comes great responsibility,” moment. Both my husband and I have really felt the weight of these words as we have struggled in discerning how to best help our aging dog, Max.
Max is 13 and we discovered last week he was having eye concerns. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get detailed here. Suffice to say that after many, many different eye drops and antibiotics, he was still in a great deal of pain and even had to go to the vet emergency room. We found ourselves Thursday morning deciding between trying to save the eye (with a hefty price tag) at a pet hospital 1.5 hours away next week, or taking it out today and ending his misery. We have never had to make a decision like this before and I am still emotionally exhausted from the experience. All we wanted to do is to minimize his pain and maintain the highest quality of life he can have while also not going into debt. I desperately wanted for someone else to tell us what to do. But we are Max’s owners, and in bringing him into our family God had entrusted him to our care.
There is a delicate balance being played out here. Max belongs to us, we determine what care he receives. Yet at the end of the day, we have to be able to answer to God how we cared for His creature. The same logic can be applied to our children, to our bodies, and to anyone or anything we find under our earthy authority. God does not swoop in and lay out how each choice should be handled (wouldn’t it be nice sometimes though?). But He does give us the grace to make those decisions. At the end of time, or the end of our earthly life, we will need to be able to offer an accounting of how well we fulfilled our vocation as a steward over creation.
I’m happy to say Max is doing well and the kids are already planning pirate-themed costumes for Halloween. My favorite ideas so far are either: A. Max is the pirate captain and we are all his crew, or B. Max is the pirate and we dress Nathan (the 2 year old) up like a parrot to be his sidekick. Both options crack me up!
This Gospel is about doing what you say you will do. It’s about taking stock in whether you mean what you say – does your “yes” mean yes and your “no” mean no. This can be in regard to our relationship with God, with others, and even with ourselves. Often, for myself at least, I might say I want to do something, but when it comes down to it I find excuses not to make the effort. This happens especially with changes that are meant to grow and stretch me, moving out of relative comfort and into a new space.
The YouTube channel attached to this blog was a pretty big change for me, and the habit of writing weekly which followed was both surprising and challenging. Some weeks, I’m so happy this new shift has happened. Others, I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the creative barrel, trying to find connections between the Gospel and life. The Holy Spirit continues inspiring me, and I am learning each week to lean more fully on His inspiration.
To be honest, that’s what this post is, the bottom of the creative barrel. I have been thinking more and more about what I want to write for the Advent journal (if you are new, each year I write a free journal which you can download and print. The previous years are found here). This is taking up a lot of creative brain space. I’m also feeling nervous because I haven’t actually started yet, and Advent is quickly approaching. I need to get to work, but I’m nervous to start. What if I don’t have enough material? Enough inspiration?
I hope you are catching the irony here – in one paragraph I tell you how I am more fully relying on the Holy Spirit for these reflections. In the next, I’m back to trying to rely on myself and my own sources of inspiration.
I am so thankful, again and again, for Bible study and for the women God continues blessing me with. This week, one of them asked for the grace to go, “at the pace of the Holy Spirit.” I loved this image. If we keep pace with the Holy Spirit, we won’t be looking back at what was, and we won’t be sprinting ahead trying to see around the bend a little sooner. We will be living in the present moment, focusing on what God wants us to focus on.
What does this mean for me? It means I need to get working on Advent, because that’s where the Holy Spirit is focusing my attention. It also means laying some crafting and TV time aside to prioritize my writing time during this period.
To bring it full circle, if we are keeping pace with the Holy Spirit, then what we say, “Yes” to will be what God desires, and we will accomplish it joyfully. Even in hard things, we will discover an inner peace because we will be doing God’s Will. When we say, “No” to what God wants, our pacing will be off. We will stumble, struggle, and miss the mark. Thankfully, most thankfully, the Holy Spirit never gets too far ahead or behind. We always have the opportunity open to us to refine our steps to rejoin Him and His pace.
I have 2 ideas for refining our steps, both of which I am actively putting into practice this week so I don’t have a lot of data for you at the moment.
Habit stacking. I struggle with plantar fasciitis. I am supposed to be stretching throughout the day, but often don’t. I regret it, complain about it, but haven’t done a whole lot about it. I am supposed to be taking care of my body as it is made in God’s image, St. Paul reminds us that we are temples where God dwells. I need to change my attitude and find the time to stretch. It occurred to me this week that my powered toothbrush runs for 2 minutes, with 4 – 30 second intervals. I already brush my teeth, no brainer. Now, I am stretching during that time. I am stacking my habits.
Journaling. With all the writing I do, and in talking with other writers, I continue to be drawn to journaling. But it just feels like more work, rather than a source of intellectual and spiritual nourishment. I recently was told about a notebook model which I’m going to try once it arrives in the mail. Each page is one day of the year, with 5 sections, one for each of the 5 years. The intent is to write down one line, one quote, one thought, every day. If you’ve been following the YouTube videos you will know I’ve been praying Morning and Night prayer consistently since May. Lately, a line or two have been standing out to me, and I’ve wanted to remember them without knowing how I would accomplish that. Welcome this new journal idea to that desire and now I have a way. My plan (again, brand new ideas I’m sharing here), is to write down one quote or verse from Morning Prayer every day. It will take minimal time, but will begin to build a habit of writing something down every single day. I’ll keep you posted about how it goes.
As I said, this wasn’t the most organized of posts. I am seriously considering taking a break from weekly reflections until I finish (and by finish, I mean both start and then finish) the Advent devotional. I will post a notice if that becomes the case. Thank you for sticking with me this far.
Daily Graces 